We Did It When We Were Young
by castlebuilders
Summary: "You want to know why I run away all the time? Because I don't trust anyone." How Jax and Tara fell in love, and how Tara got out, grew up, and came home. [Repost]
1. A Better Daughter

**Summary:** "You want to know why I run away from shit all the time? Because I don't trust anyone." Tara gets out, grows up, and comes home.

**Author's Note:** I've always been interested in Tara's journey in the ten years she was gone, but the show isn't big on non-club backstory. This is my attempt to explore her journey and explain what's happened to her that makes her so distrustful, especially because I think that's a character trait that's not explored so much on the show anymore. Although this story begins in high school, the focus will be split evenly between all of the stages of her life. I'll be adhering to canon as closely as possible (because I think Tara's story, and her story with Jax, is pretty fascinating as is—no need for me to change it!).

**11/14: **This is a repost of a story that I had previously posted here. It was removed from the website for, of all things, using the word 'shit' in the summary (and it was such a perfect quote, too—alas) and by the time I realized it, I honestly was so bored by the show I didn't have the motivation to finish it. I'm still pretty bored by the show, but I'm so sad about the direction Jax and Tara have taken, it actually inspired me more to finish this little story of first love and loss and growing up. I still have the files on my computer so it will go up relatively unchanged from its original posting. It will be angsty, but anything is better than their relationship onscreen, right?! Thanks so much for reading.

_And I cannot hold a candle for every pretty gun  
__We were strangers many hours  
__And I missed you for so long  
__When we were lions, lovers in combat  
__Faded like your name on those jeans that I burned_

_But I am older now  
__And we did it when we were young_

- '_We Did It When We Were Young_', The Gaslight Anthem

_But you'll fight and you'll make it through  
__You'll fake it if you have to  
__And you'll show up for work with a smile  
__And you'll be better, you'll be smarter  
__More grown up and a better daughter_

- '_A Better Son/Daughter_', Rilo Kiley

* * *

Tara is nine years old when her mother dies.

Rebecca Knowles's funeral is solemn but well attended, and Tara stands next to her father at the front of them all, in her prim black velvet dress with the starchy collar. She's always hated that dress but now she remembers that it's her mom who bought it from the department store even though they didn't really have the money for it because she thought her daughter deserved something nice. Even as a child, Tara is intuitive enough to know that this dress is more than just _a dress_, so she smiles when her mother puts her in it for holidays or funerals.

Her father's cousin dressed her in it today, but Tara inhales the clean scent of starch and it's like her mother is there, like she might be standing just behind her, or had just wandered away for a minute, leaving a trail to find her by. She closes her eyes and imagines that this is the case. But when she opens them again and finds herself staring at a graveyard plot and her father throwing a handful of dirt on the coffin she knows that her mother's gone somewhere Tara can't find her now.

It's overcast and cold and clouds are gathering in the sky and Tara, a pale slip of a girl with her dark hair and dark dress, nearly fades away into them.

She can smell the alcohol on her father so when the service is over and he moves toward the car, she walks with him, steadying him: nine years old and carrying her father's weight already. When they get in the Cutlass she eases into the passenger seat, slides up to the front and reaches over and keeps her small hands steady on the wheel as her father takes them to their empty home. This was her mother's job. Now it is hers.

* * *

In high school, Tara is at the top of her class. But even this does not get her out of general elective requirements, and that's how she ends up in shop class two weeks into the beginning of her sophomore year (she'd tried to avoid it and take an English elective instead but the guidance counselor had found out and taken it upon himself to fix her schedule), staring at a piece of wood that she is somehow expected to fashion into some shape approximating a rabbit.

Her teacher calls it remedial work. It's the first time that Tara has ever felt stupid.

Her eyes flicker between the piece of the wood and the bench and the saws and she feels panic's match strike flint in her chest. She can't do this without instructions, can't complete a puzzle with these pieces—something's missing. And she's not the sort of girl to ask for help. Never been the kind that _needs_ it, not since she was nine and she grew up in a hurry. Now she can't hack _shop_ class.

Tara is very seriously considering just walking out of the class and pleading with the guidance counselor for a schedule change, maybe another science class, when she feels someone slide in next to her on the bench.

"Need help, darlin'?"

She knows who Jax Teller is. Everyone at Charming High knows who Jax Teller is. They don't really run in the same circles (not, if Tara is being perfectly honest, that she has much of a 'circle' of her own anyway). Looking at him now, she's a little surprised by how _old_ he seems. Jax is only a junior but he has something about him—maybe not maturity, but a certain swagger. The fact he's talking to her surprises her, but it doesn't really intimidate her. Tara's never been too invested in the dynamics of popularity in high school—she has more important things to worry about.

"I have no idea what I'm doing," she admits. "Working with my hands…not really my thing."

Jax smiles broadly. He has an easy smile, the kind that looks like it belongs on his face, like he's meant to be smiling all the time. "Yeah, I hear you're real smart." He reaches over her and slides her piece of wood over to him while she's wondering how he even knows who she is. It's not like she's friendless, but Tara has no delusions about her popularity at this school. Mostly, she flies under the radar. And mostly, that's okay. "Lucky for you, I'm pretty good with my hands."

She raises her eyebrows at him, the beginnings of a smile blooming on her face. "Yeah," she says seriously. "That must be why you're a year ahead me and in the same beginning shop class."

Jax winks at her, and feels a flutter somewhere in her rib cage. Not because of the way his eyelashes fringe those impossibly bright eyes or the strong definition of his jaw, although she would be lying to say that they had _no_ impact on her. No, it was something else, mostly—maybe the way she feels, in this moment, perfectly and intoxicatingly normal. No drunk daddy, no foreboding textbooks, no reason to be so goddamn serious. Tara feels lighter. Almost happy.

Jax starts explaining things to her, and she thinks maybe her teasing was a little off the mark; he does seem to know what he's talking about. And he has an easy way of explaining things—not that she's surprised, 'easy' is the word she keeps coming back to for him; it's like he's the physical embodiment of the word—that makes her think that maybe she won't fail this stupid class after all.

* * *

At the end of the day Tara pulls her books out of her locker, slams the door shut, and comes face-to-face with Jax Teller. The books spill out of her arms and hit the floor in a series of thuds.

"Oh—you don't have to—" she says, but it's useless; Jax is already bent on one knee picking them up. He hands them to her with a smirk.

"A.P. Chemistry?" he asks. "I thought you had to be at least a junior to take that."

"You do—I tested into it. Thanks," she adds, cradling the books in her arms again.

Jax rocks back on his heels, his hands deep in the pockets of his baggy jeans. "Hey, I need a favor. And I think you owe me one." That smile flashes across his face. "Pulled a rabbit out of my hat for you, Tara."

"Yeah, all right," she agrees. It's the decent thing to do, after all; she's fairly sure she would have had some sort of academic post-traumatic stress disorder had Jax not helped her out. "What do you need?"

Something flickers on his face. It's gone before she can analyze it but she thinks it might have been nervousness—it looked wrong on his features, anyway. "That brain of yours, actually. You take geometry?"

"Last year."

"Yeah, me too. Thing is, I sort of failed. Condition of being able to take it again—gotta have a tutor for awhile, keep my grade steady, make sure I'm on track." He says it with the air of someone parroting off a list of conditions he's intimately familiar with both receiving and ignoring. "Hill gave me someone, but I think I'd do better with you. You know, really reach my full potential."

Tara doubts severely that Jax has any plans of living up to any potential he has, but she doesn't mind. It's the beginning of the year: She's not that busy with extracurriculars yet, and besides, peer tutoring would look good on her college applications.

If there's another reason that she's willing to do it, she doesn't let herself realize it.

"Mr. Hill likes me. I think he'll be okay with it," she says.

Jax ducks his chin and looks at her through the hair falling over his eyes. "_You_ okay with it?" he asks. "Gotta warn you, I'm no one's favorite student."

"I'll make a scholar out of you, Teller," she says, leading him toward the side doors out of the school. "I guess we can meet at the library. Did Mr. Hill give you any sort of schedule you need to follow?"

"Yeah, three times a week."

Tara stares at him. "Today's _Thursday_."

A smile she can only describe as _sneaky_ lights up Jax's face. "Guess we better get started today. You busy?"

"Well, no—"

"I can give you a lift." Tara notices that they've stopped in the student parking lot in front of a motorcycle. She looks at the bike, back to Jax. Could sixteen year olds even legally ride? Weren't there classes you had to pass? He had just told her he failed _geometry_; how could she trust him with her life—

"You're not serious."

He shrugs and leans back against the bike with his arms crossed across his chest, looking like he might be testing her. "As a heart attack, babe."

It's only now, after she's agreed to tutor Jax Teller—and apparently implicitly agreed to other things, like riding on the back of his bike which she wasn't even sure was _legal_—Tara starts to wonder what she's getting herself into.


	2. On My Mind

**Author's Note:** Thank you so much to everyone who has reviewed or placed this story on their favorites and/or alerts lists. Your kindness has been overwhelming and has provided lots of motivation. I hope you enjoy this new chapter, which was fueled entirely by pie and red wine.

_Guilty as charged, you were on my mind  
Try as I might, I can't seem to lie  
I can love you back if you like  
I can hold you back if you like_

_And so I go back home to be by myself_  
_I try everything I've ever read_  
_Desperate, I still can't get you out of my head_

_Because you're on my mind_  
_All the time_

—"Guilty as Charged", Tegan and Sara

* * *

At every stop light Jax takes the opportunity to tease her. But the engine is still loud and he's sitting in front of her so his words don't quite reach her (although the woman in the SUV to their right seems to think Jax is heckling her), but she gets the gist from the bits and pieces she does pick up. "—Bruising my goddamn ribs", for instance, might indicate some amusement with the death grip she has around his waist. By the time they've parked in the library's lot and she moves to stand up Tara half-thinks her legs might just collapse right under her.

"Didn't take you for such a pussy," Jax crows.

"Keep it up, Teller," she tells him mildly and thrusts the helmet past his waiting arm and straight into his chest. "Doesn't bother me. Just remember who holds the key to your academic future here."

Inside, they manage to secure one of the two quiet study rooms in the small library. Tara's stacking her own books on the table when she notices Jax isn't doing the same. Rather, he's reclining on a chair balanced on two legs, all slouched indifference with his hands crossed behind his head. It's only now that she realizes he hadn't had any books or even a bag when they left school.

"Your textbook…" she prompts.

Jax feigns regret. She can tell he's faking it because from what she's seen Jax is incapable of being serious. But there's this way he jokes around that makes it impossible to be annoyed with him—he punctuates every smart comment with a wink or a smirk that seems meant to indicate he's fully aware of how obnoxiously charming he is. Maybe the word she's looking for is self-aware. At first Tara thinks he's too young for that, but then she remembers the heaviness of his expression in class. She remembers how old he looked. "Must have left it at school."

Tara rolls her eyes, but it's really more for show; she's not that bothered. It's not her ass on the line here anyway. "Who told you I would be a good tutor, anyway?" she asks, adding: "I want to know so I can kill them."

"My best friend is dating this girl in your class…Donna Lerner?" Tara nods in recognition. She isn't close to Donna but knows enough to like her; she barely clears five feet but last year had knocked a boy out cold for insinuating that her family was white trash. "Yeah, she said you helped her out with finals last year."

"I should start charging," she says drily. They're silent for a moment—comfortably so—and then her eyes catch on something. "You've got a tattoo?" Her fingers unconsciously stray to his arm and trace the outlines of the ink there. A gravestone, crows perched on top of it. He pushes his sleeve up, regarding it like she does, like it's the first time he's seen it. New eyes. "Your parents don't care?" Tara can't imagine what her father would do if she came home with a tattoo. The drunken verbal abuse was a given—what exactly he'd say was always a fun surprise.

"Well—it's for my old man. He died last year. So my mom likes it." His voice is indifferent but there's tension at the corners of his eyes. Tara had thought he looked old before; that was nothing. He has an expression on his face that she recognizes because she's seen it before. She's seen it in the mirror, hundreds of times, and she's memorized the feeling of her features twisting unwillingly into it when she senses pity on a stranger's lips.

"Yeah, I heard about that," she says, feeling stupid. John Teller's death had been bloody, the ensuing funeral legendary. The deep rumble of bikes had permeated Charming for a week straight as every living member of the Sons of Anarchy had descended upon the town. How could she have forgotten? But she doesn't say sorry. She hates when people tell _her_ sorry. "I think my dad would kill me if I got one, even for my mom." Her tone is light; that's how she knows how to deal with this. Make it a joke and no one knows how true it is. The fading bruises beneath her sleeves, where her father had grabbed her and held her in front of him to make her listen while he screamed, are a testament to his violence.

"Your mom…" Jax trails off, but the question is implied.

"Yeah." He nods and looks at her thoughtfully. But he doesn't say anything. He doesn't say sorry.

Tara thinks they might understand each other.

They don't do much actual studying, but Tara does her best to explain how Mr. Hill grades (homework counts for practically nothing, so he can get away with not doing it—Jax looks inordinately pleased with this). An hour goes by in the space of a second, and when she slides onto his bike behind him, this time she is not afraid.

About three blocks from her house, she nudges his shoulder. The bike shudders to a stop in the empty lane. The purr of the engine is quieter now—still loud but she can hear the faint chirping of birds, a lawnmower running somewhere nearby. The air smells like honeysuckle and hot charcoal. It's the setting of a thousand other California afternoons, but it feels _different_. Significant. Suddenly she's aware of so many things she never has been before, and not just the ephemeral perfection of the collision of sight and sound and smell…but of feeling, too. Like it's not just the trees and flowers that are blooming but something in her.

"What's up?" Jax says over his shoulder.

"Let me off here." He cuts the engine and stares at her as she takes his helmet off for the second time that day.

"Thought you said you lived on Cardinal?"

"I do." She flashes a smile that's too big at him. "Overprotective dad." _Drunk dad_, she does not say. Jax doesn't seem bothered. She thinks it's likely Jax has lots of experience with avoiding overprotective fathers—she's heard the stories from the mouths of dozens of girls giggling over classroom aisles between bells. "Thanks for the lift."

"Not a problem, darlin'." Jax drops a wink at her and fastens his helmet's strap underneath his chin. She lets him go forward before she starts walking the three blocks to her house. By the time she gets to the end of the street he's long since disappeared. Tara is left alone with those feelings of change and newness and something being stirred to life, but now that the heat of Jax's body beside her is nothing more than a memory she's half-convinced it never happened at all.

* * *

For the next four weeks, she is, in theory, scheduled to meet with Jax three days a week.

By the third week she cannot imagine a life where a weekday goes by without her seeing him.

He is there, all the time, even when he's not. Slipping in quietly behind her in the lunch line and pinching her waist and grinning innocently when she whips around (although she knows for a fact he has history during her lunch period). Showing up to sixth period and telling Ms. Arrington, with his most imploring voice, that the principal needed to see Tara, then spiriting her away early from school to parks on the outer limits of Charming that she hadn't even known existed. It's on these excursions that she meets Opie Winston, Jax's best friend, and is able to get to know Donna more. She likes the both of them. And although she has never felt the ache of a lack of real companionship before, these afternoons make her aware that it was a void she had never known needed filling.

And when she's not with Jax, she's thinking of him. Not, she tells herself, in any sort of weird obsessive way. But she is so relentlessly analytical about everything else in her life; it's only natural that she's the same way about Jax, who she's still not sure if she likes or _likes_. Every touch, every comment, every _look_: Her brain spins it all, whirling it all around and around in some effort to make sense of what she feels and what he feels and twist it into something that she can know concretely. Tara likes facts. She likes plans.

She doesn't like this wondering.

But—all of that aside—there is still something to be said about the way she feels when she lays in bed at night and stares at the ceiling, too giddy and breathless to sleep, her wakefulness buoyed purely by thoughts of blond hair and rough hands.

When four weeks are over, she feels that she has known Jax a lifetime.

At the end of the week, she meets Jax in the school library after first period. Tara is working on research for the science fair; Jax is skipping. When he joins her at the table she looks at him expectantly.

"Where is it?" she demands.

"Where's what?" Jax says innocently. She raises her eyebrows. Interim report cards had been handed out that morning. Jax needed at least a B in geometry to get off of academic probation. He pulls a piece of paper, already impossibly rumpled, from his back pocket. "This?"

She snatches it from him, unfolds it, and skims her eyes over his grades. A row of Cs and Ds. And, standing out like beacons, two As.

Geometry. And English.

Joy and pride bubble up in her chest. And she can't help herself—she launches herself at him and pulls him into a hug. She feels him laugh against her shoulder and reach his arms around to embrace her too. When she pulls back, she feels the heat of a blush on her cheeks. "Congratulations," she says sincerely.

"Yeah, you too," Jax says. "Must be a miracle worker, turnin' me around like that."

"Must be," she agrees. And then, because she can't help but wonder: "_English_?"

For what she thinks is the first time since she's known him, Jax looks genuinely uncomfortable. This is not the Jax who can make jokes at his own expense about his dismal academic track record. Intelligence, it seems, makes him vulnerable. Tara wonders how he's grown up that it's something he wants to hide.

His eyes on the table, Jax says, "Yeah, well. I like to read."

In years' time, when she looks back and charts the course of their relationship, Tara will pinpoint this moment, the first time she saw the hidden parts of a boy that foreshadowed the man he would become, as the second she fell irreversibly in love with Jax.

And although she can't put a name to her burgeoning feelings—not yet—Tara is aware again that something has changed. This time it's not in her; it's between the two of them.

At least, that is what she thinks.

* * *

Jax is officially off the hook with Mr. Hill, but he hadn't said anything to Tara about stopping their tutoring. She assumes, maybe somewhat presumptuously, that although he may be off academic probation he'd still like her help. Or at least her company.

They normally meet at her locker after school, but she decides the next Monday to go meet him instead of waiting. His locker is right around the corner from her seventh period class, so she's able to get there quickly. This affords her the privilege of seeing Jax coming down the hall long before he spots her with his arm around a girl, dropping kisses into her hair, his hand playing at the nip of her waist. He touches the girl and Tara feels the phantom touch of his hand on her own body. Her heart aches but not just with pain—logically, she knows that it's only been a month. A month of _nothing_ at that, and that's what hurts: how could she have let her brain spin something out of nothing? She's supposed to be _smart_.

She does her best to lean idly against the locker, straightening up when he approaches, smiling at him and taking in his look of surprise. She digs around in her messenger bag and retrieves a folder stuffed with paper. "All my old notes," she explains. She had been using them to teach Jax the most efficient way to study, although she half suspects he just studies from her own notes instead of endeavoring to learn how to take his own. "Since you're off probation now and don't need me…thought these might still be useful."

Jax is still staring at her, a peculiar look in his eyes, but she resolves not to think too much about it. She's done reading into things that aren't there. "Thanks," he says slowly. Tara smiles at him—that same too-big smile, eyes just wide enough to fake earnest enthusiasm.

"See you around," she says, and walks away.

It is the first time Tara walks out on the possibility of something because it hurts too much to try.

It is not the last.


	3. Lock the Door On You

**Author's Note**: Thank you all again for your extraordinarily kind feedback. A special thank you to those of you who have commented on the dynamic between Jax and Tara, as I was afraid of getting it right—thanks for the assurance that I'm doing okay. And hey, how 'bout that finale, huh? Have to say I was a little underwhelmed. But it sure is weird to watch Tara undergoing a transformation on the show and be writing a transformation here that's going to be, well, pretty much completely the opposite. It's got my brain scrambled! I hope that this chapter pleases you all nonetheless. A million thanks for reading.

_But I could lock the door on you babe  
You could lock the door on me  
But how much time would we be wasting  
When both of our hearts hold the key  
_

-_"_If Time Was For Wasting", Dylan Leblanc_  
_

* * *

For six weeks Tara doesn't talk, really _talk_, to Jax.

It's not like she goes out of her way not to talk to him—she just realizes now that their lives never intersected much anyway. It took more effort to see him than it does to not. They still have shop together, but they stay to their separate groups even if they occasionally indulge in idle conversation. The thing is, it's not awkward like Tara had expected it to be. She had thought it might be different than it was, as if both of them were aware they were orbiting around some subject they couldn't speak of for fear of throwing the fragile balance of their friendship out of order. It was hard—in the first few weeks, at least—for Tara to be around him and not talk to him, not sneak her fingers at the crook of his elbow or around his ribs when she sat behind him on his Harley. But mostly it seems that it's only her that feels this way, because Jax is the same as he's ever been.

And more than making her sad, it just outright annoys her.

This is why, when several weeks have gone by and she has spent a period staring at a block of wood again with no idea how to turn _this_ one into a pig while Jax sits on the other side of the room laughing and completely blind to her distress, Tara decides she has had _enough_. She may have been the one to cool off their friendship, but she—somewhat unfairly—has decided to shove the blame right onto Jax Teller's shoulders. It is his fault, really, in some way. He has to know how easy it is to fall in love with him.

So when class is over and Jax sidles up to her table looking supremely unbothered and tosses her a casual, "Having trouble, babe?", Tara slams the wood onto the workspace, shoulders her bag with unnecessary savageness, and says, "Go to hell."

She stalks out the door and leaves Jax behind her, utterly confused.

Tara has not felt so satisfied in weeks.

* * *

About a week later she goes with Donna to a hidden little stretch of land outside of Charming to spend the afternoon. Technically it belongs to Oswald Lumber, but they haven't gotten around to chopping it down yet and over here the grass is so green and the trees so tall that she almost feels transported to a different world. Donna pulls over to the side of the road where there's a trail that leads further into the woods; they follow it and about fifteen minutes in settle in a little clearing where the tree cover is so thick the sunlight is reduced to a hazy fog drifting down through the leaves.

Tara is grateful for these afternoons, and for Donna. Even though things are so weird with Jax her friendship with Donna has only grown stronger. Sometimes they study together, but mostly they just talk, laugh, smoke joints Donna's rolled with expert precision. It feels good, not being so serious. Some days, like today, when she is helpless to her own laughter, she's reminded of how _good_ it feels to be happy, and the feeling is so alien that she feels like she's living a different life.

They're there for several hours. Eventually the sun starts to fall and everything turns blue with the darkening sky. Tara stares up at it, watching smoke curl lazily upwards, taking in the sweet smell of Donna's hair piled next to her own.

"What's up with you and Jax?"

Tara is startled both by the sound of Donna's voice and her words. "Sorry?" Donna's laugh comes fast and low.

"He's like a girl," she says. "All moody whenever he sees you."

"I couldn't tell." Tara chooses her words carefully. She likes Donna, but she can't compete with the lifetime of friendship she has with Jax. She doesn't want to say anything that gives her away. "He acts the same."

"Yeah, around _you_." Donna turns over so she can prop her chin up in her palms and stare down at Tara. She feels vaguely like she's being interrogated. "I know Jax. Know him like my own brother. Believe me, something's changed."

Tara thinks of the girls she's seen Jax with—all popular, all giggly, all beautiful. "I'm not really his type."

"Nah, not really." Donna winks at her. "That's a good thing. Hey—shh—" Tara cocks her eyebrow; Donna raises one finger up. "Listen," she whispers. And then Tara can hear it—dry leaves crackling underfoot and two distinctly male voices calling out Donna's name. For one insane moment Tara honestly thinks they're going to get axe-murdered. And then, seemingly from out of nowhere, Jax and Opie stumble from behind a tree and into the clearing.

"Jesus _Christ_!" Donna says. "The hell are you two doing?"

"Saw your car out on the road," Opie says. Tara can't help but think he looks like a puppy, with that clean-shaven baby face radiating apology. "Didn't look right—we were worried." Tara watches Donna's face blossom in a reluctant smile.

"Well, we're fine."

"Yeah, I'm gettin' that," Jax says, looking directly at Tara. "You gonna share that?"

Tara shrugs and lifts her hand up, extending the joint to him. He takes it, takes a hit, keeps staring at her. "So this is the secret life of Tara Knowles, huh? You been holding out on me."

"Guess so," she says mildly, looking back up at the sky. It's getting darker, half burning sunset and half cold blue light. "I should probably be getting home."

"Need a lift?"

"Yeah, I could use one." Tara looks straight at him now. "Donna, do you mind?" Jax raises his eyebrows at her, a smile playing at his lips. He nods at her like he's got her number. But he's the first to look away.

* * *

Saturday afternoon, while she lies in bed listening to the radio and reading _The Bell Jar_, Tara hears a sharp knock at the door. Her father is working the night shift and won't be home until dawn so she goes to answer it without worrying about him appearing in the doorway behind her to make trouble. She swings the door open, squinting into the bright sun.

Without preamble, Jax says, "The hell is your problem?"

Tara stares at him, at a loss for words. "I—_excuse me_?"

"Why are you pissed at me?"

"How did you know this is my house?"

"Donna. Why are you pissed?" he repeats.

"I'm not pissed," she says, although it's a blatant lie. "Just having a rough time lately."

"Is it shop?" Tara crosses her arms and looks down but doesn't respond, because she doesn't think she can open her mouth and not have embarrassing words tumble right out of it. "I would've helped you," Jax says with an unfamiliar look in his eyes, "if you'd asked me." She lifts one of her shoulders up in a half-hearted shrug.

"Wouldn't want to trouble you—take you away from all of your extracurriculars."

"_Jesus_." Jax draws the word out, practically wraps his tongue around it before managing to spit it out. "Is _that_ what this is about?"

"Don't know what you mean." Tara stares resolutely at a point behind Jax. Mr. Combs is mowing his lawn in a pair of shorts. His sweaty red stomach hangs over the waistband. She averts her eyes, tries to find something that's not _more_ unpleasant than this conversation. There's silence for a few seconds. In her ears she hears every beat of her heart, thump-thumping with a peculiar mix of emotions—knowing that this could be the moment that could change things if only she were able to _tell_ him how she feels…and hating herself because she knows she is too much of a coward to do it.

Then, finally, Jax says, "You're jealous."

Tara's eyes dart to him immediately, her mouth twisting in a frown. "I'm not," she snaps, and that's not all she wants to say, but she finds herself unable to say it because Jax moves toward her and bends down and captures her mouth with his own.

Her hand goes up to the back of his head and she tangles her fingers in his long hair, pressing him closer, knowing he could never be close enough. All she can think is that it is _right_, this thing between the two of them, completely and utterly right. She feels like the last piece of a puzzle has clicked into place, or like it must have felt when power first flickered through a city—electricity crackling alive on street after street, bringing life and light to the darkness.

And then after what seems like a dizzying lifetime he breaks off and she is left staring dazedly into his face. "You shouldn't be," Jax says quietly, and a smile—a kind one, one that's like a shared secret between the two of them—transforms his whole face. He tips his hat at her and saunters off down her sidewalk, back to his bike. Tara stares after him, even when he does not look back at her, and it's only after he's disappeared that she sags against the doorway and lets giddy, exhilarated laughter bubble up out of her heart and mouth.


	4. Let the Bad Parts In

**Author's Note**: Thank you again for all your reviews. As I always, I remain awed by your kindness! A special thank you to givelovesolong for your particularly lovely review—in the midst of my bout with writers' block your extraordinarily sweet feedback gave me the boost I needed.

This chapter brought to you by one of my favorite clues into Tara's backstory: "_I'm not eighteen years old anymore, Gemma. My cat-fighting days are behind me_."

_Take me, take me back to your bed  
I love you so much that it hurts my head  
I don't mind you under my skin  
I'll let the bad parts in, the bad parts in_

—"Degausser", Brand New

* * *

Dating Jax Teller, Tara discovers, is not unlike _not_ dating Jax Teller. There are perks like his easy charm working in her favor and the frankly amazing things he can do with his hands, but mostly dating Jax Teller is the same as not dating him, because she's starting to think you don't need to be his girlfriend to be on the receiving end of his charm. Or his hands. It's not that she worries about other girls, but that nothing has really changed since they've started dating, and she can't help but think that something is supposed to have changed. Tara has had crushes and kisses and fleeting flirtations before but Jax is her first real relationship and sometimes she wonders if she's just going about everything all wrong.

Which makes it hard to sit and listen to the bullshit about how she's not good enough for Jax.

The whispers follow her at school, have ever since Jax cornered her outside of AP Bio and laid a kiss on her right there, and mostly they're more of a nuisance than anything. The hardest part is going from being ignored to hypervisible. Even her teachers treat her differently. But since she was young and the clerk at the drugstore gave her mother's bruised eye a look that was more judgmental than sympathetic, Tara's known that most people's opinions don't mean shit.

So when she walks into the bathroom and Emily Gonder gives her a look from the top of her head to the bottom of her shoes and says to her friends, like she's not even there, "I give it three weeks before he gets bored," Tara doesn't care. Not really. Not even when she rolls her eyes and shoves past Emily hard enough that she stumbles back into a stall's door and hisses something nasty at Tara. She doesn't care at all.

Really.

* * *

Really, the issue is probably that they haven't had sex.

It's only been a little over a month now and it's not like Jax pressures her but he's _Jax_. The worst part is that she wants to, really wants to, especially because it's not like they haven't done anything else—but every time he goes to pull at the hem of her shirt Tara remembers the bruises there, the bruises that are always there, and she can't help it. She freaks. In a panicky way that screams 'severely disturbed' more than 'not ready'. She doesn't blame him for being confused, especially when she's the initiator, but there's nothing she can do. There are two sides of her—the Tara that's growing up and the Tara that's still a little girl tasked with keeping her family's secrets and shame shadowed—and they are at war.

* * *

"You should come to the party tonight," Donna says over the phone. Tara is sitting on her bed, phone wedged between her shoulder and ear while she coats her nails in blue polish. She figures Jax will like it—SAMCRO colors. He hasn't brought her around the club too much but that has as much to do with her apprehension as it does any hesitance on his part.

"You think? Jax mentioned it, but…"

"Yeah, totally. You know the Hales' house opens up to all that land…it's a great spot."

"I just can't believe Jax and Opie would willingly go to a party at David Hale's house."

Donna's laugh comes through bright and easy. "They wouldn't miss the chance to start shit with him in his own house."

Tara feels a little bad for David, honestly. He's a nice enough guy, if not a little _too_ upstanding in that 50s All-American way. Sometimes she half expects him to offer her his letterman jacket or invite her to the diner for a sodapop. But he's always been kind to her, even when Jax is hovering over her shoulder insulting him. She used to wonder why he never stood up for himself, but soon enough she was able to decipher the meaning of that glinting look in his eyes and the slight clench of his jaw.

He didn't think Jax was worth it.

So she figures he probably won't take Jax's bait tonight and, really, what the hell—it's not like she hasn't earned a good night.

"Think you could give me a ride? My dad's out of town, took the Cutlass."

"No problem. See you in two hours?"

"Yeah, thanks. See you."

Tara hangs up the phone and when she's done with her shower and has dried her hair and pulled it back into a low ponytail, she stares into her closet, considering. It's still warm outside so she pulls on a pair of cut-off shorts and a faded Doors shirt that had belonged to her mother years ago. Her mom had always had a thing for Jim Morrison.

Tara thinks she probably would have liked Jax too.

The thought fills her with a sadness that's both quiet and all encompassing in its strength. She's thinking about what her mother would have said about Jax and suddenly she misses her so much it hurts, so much that her heart restricts in protest at the pain that fills it. Tara doesn't care _what_ her mom would have said about Jax: if she would like him, like Tara suspects, or if she would hate him and his cockiness and warn Tara off of him. She doesn't care. She just wants her _here_.

A quick honk outside signals Donna's arrival, so Tara shoves her feet quickly into her favorite pair of worn-in cowboy boots and gives the picture of her mother on her bookshelf one last parting glance. "Love you," she whispers, and hopes that she can hear her.

* * *

The party is okay. She and Donna meet up with the boys soon after getting there and they spend most of their time in the backyard, taking advantage of the free beer and sneaking joints when David's not around. Tara's gone off to the bathroom for a minute and when she comes out David is hanging around, looking serious.

"Hey," she says slowly. "Good party."

"Thanks." He pauses, shuffles his feet. "You here with Jax?"

Tara cocks her head sideways at him. "Well, he's my boyfriend, so…"

"You're too good for him." The words come out all in a rush, like his mouth his incapable of holding them all in. "My old man's a judge and if you knew what I did about the club, Tara…it's bad news. You shouldn't get yourself mixed up in it."

First she feels annoyed. She likes David, but they're not really _friends_, and he doesn't know enough about her or her life to give her advice on it. But his concern is, in a strange way, touching.

"I appreciate it," Tara says carefully, "but I'm dating Jax. Not the club."

David stares at her and he looks sad and serious and suddenly old. She wonders what it is that he knows about the club. What his father's passed on to him—if it's bullshit or if David knows any truths that she doesn't.

"I hope it stays that way," he tells her. "For your sake."

Tara looks after him for a second before starting off, feeling more melancholy. She's almost made it back to Jax and the others when she feels someone collide with her back.

"Sorry," she says automatically and turns around to give whoever it is an apologetic look. When she sees Emily with that smug look on her face the apology is forgotten. She rolls her eyes and turns back around.

"You're a real rude bitch, you know that?"

Tara levels her with a look of disbelief. "What?"

"I got you a drink and you didn't even say thank you."

Clearly Emily is in the mood for some sort of verbal catfight that Tara couldn't be less interested in. "Whatever you say," she says dispassionately, moving to leave.

"Don't leave without your drink," says Emily, and throws a cupful of beer in Tara's face. For one moment she stares at Emily and blinks through the alcohol dripping from her eyelashes and then she processes the beer soaking through the front of her shirt. Her mother's shirt.

"You _stupid bitch_," Tara says. She has half a second to savor the appearance of fear on Emily's face before her fist cracks her nose and sends her down to the ground. Tara climbs on top of her and straddles her, keeping her down. It's not like she's ever fought anyone before so there's no technique guiding her here, just a blinding rage that's directing her to _hurt_. She feels Emily's hands clawing under her shirt and her nails dragging across her skin but hardly registers the pain. Then there's someone pulling her up by her arms even as she tries to kick out of their grip. But the hands are gentle enough that she knows immediately, without looking, that it's Jax so she lets him pull her away. As they go she takes in Emily's face, the tear tracks, the blood leaking from her nose, and spits, "Talk shit to me again and I'll finish it."

"Jesus Christ," she hears Jax say under his breath. But he's laughing while he pulls her into an empty room. If she's not mistaken, he sounds a little proud.

* * *

"My little hellraiser," Jax says good-naturedly. He's inspecting her back, where Emily's nails had caught at her skin, ripped across it while trying to fight her off like some twisted lovers' embrace. His hands skim over her skin and Tara hisses. "Shit," he says, "I didn't know she got you that good."

But it's not the scratches that hurt; it's the bruises his knuckles are pressed into. And suddenly Tara doesn't care. She just doesn't care. She's just _fought_ someone and she feels like she's been fighting her whole life, keeping this secret, and Tara is so exhausted she thinks she could cry. Suddenly it's not the shame that's the hardest part; it's the lying. So she straightens her shoulders up and pulls a blanket round them and steels herself and mutters, "She didn't."

"I know you're tough," Jax says, "but your back's all fucked up, babe."

Tara stares forward out the window, out into the street, through the windows of the house across the street where a woman is sitting in front of a television. She watches the smoke curl up off of her cigarette and feels a strange sense of disconnect, a slowing of time, like her soul is clawing itself up out from her body and filling the space around it and Tara is just drifting up into the air with the seams of her body torn open. "Yeah, I know. She didn't do it."

She's not looking at Jax but she can feel him tense. His hand falls still on her shoulders. She feels the tips of his fingers draw up with his clenching knuckles. "The hell do you mean?"

"My dad isn't overprotective." Tara says it quickly but hears the hollowness in her own voice. Jax is silent for a moment that seems to drag on interminably, and when he finally speaks his voice is flinty.

"How long?"

"He used to take it out on my mom, but since…" she trails off.

"Holy shit," Jax says slowly. And it's insane but she feels gratified to hear it, that note of shock and rage brimming beneath the surface, because after years of bearing it alone she can't even describe how relieving it is to have someone else acknowledge the weight of it. She knows with the way he's looking at her now that he's seeing her with new eyes. But it doesn't scare her. Because for the first time she can see what she is.

Strong.

"I'll kill him."

"Jax," she says quietly.

"I ain't gonna let him _hurt_ you, Tara—"

"_You_ can't do anything about it." She shrugs one of her shoulders half-heartedly. "I'll be eighteen in less than three years, Jax. I'll be able to go to college, get away."

"And in the meantime, what? You'll let him whale on you?"

She leans into his chest. Tara can hear his heart beating, the reassuring thump of it, fast and strong. "It's worse now. She died this month. It'll ease up…it always does."

Finally, Jax says, "All right."

"Jax," she says again. She feels old and young and scared and brave. She feels like a mess but when she's with Jax it all makes sense, all those warring parts of her. Jax looks down at her and she watches his face change in a million different ways when she says, "Take me home."

* * *

In her bed he undresses her with a reverence she didn't know he possessed and kisses every bruise. She's not ashamed of any of them. Tara comes with her mouth against his neck and whispering _I love you I love you I love you_ into his salt-soaked skin. It's the first time—the night is full of them. When it's over she lays splayed against his chest with his hands playing at the tangles of her hair. And Jax says, in that quiet, straightforward way of his that makes everything sound a little more poetic than words alone could, "You're the first person I've ever loved." He pauses; Tara feels her heart stop. "I'm going to love you for the rest of my life."

Tara knows the feeling.


	5. You Were Far Away

_Today you were far away  
And I didn't ask you why  
What could I say?  
I was far away  
You just walked away  
And I just watched you  
What could I say?_

_How close am I to losing you?_

—"About Today", The National

* * *

Years later, Tara still remembers the summer after her sophomore year as the best of her life. But maybe it's the hell of the years that succeed it that makes her remember it so rosily.

It's the year that Jax turns eighteen. A few days after the fourth of July—Tara thinks it's appropriate. No one has ever been a boy of summer more than Jax Teller. On the morning of his birthday she wakes up before him in her bed, stares at him, wondering at the sharper edges of his jaw and the broader lines of his shoulders. Today he is a man but to her he is still Jax, the boy who owns her heart, the boy who rides a Harley and carries a knife at his hip and who quietly steals her books after she's finished reading them.

That's who Jax is to her.

But now he's eighteen and Tara knows everything is going to change. She's sensed it on the rare occasions she goes to the clubhouse: a strange feeling in the air that has nothing to do with the changing weather. It's more like an electrical current has lit the club from within. More money, more women. More of the things Jax doesn't tell her, maybe the things that Jax doesn't even know. But today he's eighteen and that changes. Today Jax is a prospect.

Jax stirs from sleep and her moment of reflective worry is over. He opens his bleary eyes and smiles at her. "Morning, babe."

"Morning," she whispers.

"What time is it?"

"A little past ten," Tara says. Jax groans and rolls over, pushes himself off the bed, picks up last night's clothes. "Somewhere you need to be?"

"Yeah, gotta go by TM. Club shit." He shrugs into his t-shirt. There's a pang in her chest, an actual ache, as she looks at him. She could sit up and reach out and touch him and still feel like she's lost him. What he dismissively calls _club shit_ is betrayed by the proud set of his jaw, the nervous energy that's set him rocking back on his heels.

Tara knows it is selfish but she finds herself wishing Jax wouldn't prospect. She doesn't know a lot about the club—Jax doesn't let her know a lot—but she knows its legacy of violence, knows that the town fears and loves it in equal measure. Sometimes when she's tucked under Jax's shoulder at parties at the clubhouse and the members don't really see her (she does not, after all, attend parties clothed only in pasties and hot pants like the crow eaters do and it affords her some measure of invisibility) she can listen to the conversations and read in between the lines. To the town SAMCRO are community servants keeping drugs off Charming's idyllic small town streets, but when Tara hears the casual references to violence, the references that are too specific to be hyperbolic, she wonders who the men really are.

Tara is afraid of the day that she looks at Jax and wonders the same thing.

When he leans down and drops a kiss on her forehead, smiling against her skin, she curls her fingers around the collar of his navy shirt. "Hey, Jax." He stills, expectant, and she stares into his bright eyes, a smile spreading mask-like across her lips. "Happy birthday," Tara whispers, and she pulls him down onto her and kisses him like she's saying goodbye.

(Jax is late to church.)

* * *

When Jax shows up to her house that night to pick her up for the party, he's wearing a cut and a top rocker.

* * *

On the first day of school Jax pulls up to the kiss and ride, not the student parking lot, and she climbs off the back of his bike with a question in her mouth and an answer in her head.

"Are you really skipping the first day?"

He does her the courtesy of pulling his sunglasses off so she can watch him squint repentantly in the new sun. "More like the year," he says, eyes crinkling like he knows she's not going to like what she hears. "It's for the best, Tara. I gotta take prospecting seriously. I can't get by on my old man's legacy." She's staring at him in disbelief and his face gets a little hard, defensive. "Look, it makes sense. I ain't made for school, anyway. Not like you. Gonna get my GED, work in the shop. It's not like I'm not gonna have a _job_."

"Fine," she says tightly. Her economy of words seems to be setting Jax on edge and he straightens up, his eyes flaring, trying to win a fight she hasn't picked. Yet.

"That's it?"

"Yeah, that's it," she bites back, and shoves her helmet against his chest, turns and stalks away. Then she thinks better of it and turns back around, right back up to him. "I don't care what you want to do, Jax. I'm not your keeper. But you don't even respect me enough to _tell me_."

Then she turns away again, for good this time, and storms toward the school. And she doesn't look back, but she watches his reflection in the smudged glass doors so she knows that while she's walking away he hasn't moved. Not at all.

* * *

A few days later Jax shows up to her house, not quite repentant, but softer around the edges. He rings the doorbell five minutes after her father leaves for the night shift and she thinks that he must have sat around the block waiting for him to leave, trying to keep the peace between her and her father. Her heart swells.

"Hey," he says, leaning against the doorframe. "My mom's having a dinner tonight. Sort of a family thing. Want to come?"

Although they've been dating for a solid few months, Tara has yet to really _meet_ Gemma Teller. She's only been to the clubhouse a few times and Gemma was always in the middle of it all: holding court with the other old ladies with a presence as indomitable as her sons, too busy to pay attention to Tara. Truth be told, Gemma scared the shit out of her.

But Jax is looking at her with real hope in his eyes and she can't stand to have another thing in between them, so she says, "Okay," and opens her door to let him in.

* * *

When she meets Gemma Teller, she is wearing leather and thick blonde highlights in her hair. Up close, she is ageless, almost: not that she looks younger than she is, but she has an energy to her that's detectable only in her orbit. A curious combination of grace and hardness, catlike in the subtle ferocity of her presence.

"It's so good to finally meet you, honey," Gemma says. She wraps her in a perfumed hug and then tips Tara's chin up to examine her. She feels like a child. "Look at those eyes. You're a beautiful one, aren't you."

Tara would feel like a real asshole if she said _thank you _like she agreed so she smiles shyly instead. "Come on," says Gemma. "Why don't you help me with the salad." Jax gives her a motivational pat on the back as his mother leads her off into the kitchen.

There are half a dozen other old ladies in there. They are all in heels, their hair teased, their tits out—it's not what Tara thinks of when she thinks _family dinner_. In her jeans and plaid shirt she feels underdressed but she's thinking that in this crowd, it's not such a bad thing.

Gemma sets her to work and waits a few minutes before the questions start. "How old are you, sweetie?"

"Sixteen." Tara drops the tomatoes into the salad. "Seventeen in a few weeks."

"Important time." Gemma doesn't look at her when she asks, "You started thinking what you want to do with your life?"

Has she? Jesus, she doesn't know. She takes advanced classes—she could graduate early if she wanted to—and according to the guidance counselor, she has a "_bright future ahead of her_". But she doesn't know what that future is. Hasn't given much thought to it. What would the point be? There's no way she could afford to go to college, and even if she could get scholarships, her father…

"I don't know," she says honestly. "Not really. I'm just focused on high school right now. My mom died when I was young, so my dad doesn't really have anyone to take care of him."

She sees Gemma's posture soften, senses she's said the right thing. "That's real good of you, honey. Family," says Gemma, "is the most important thing in the world." She puts down her platter of rolls and looks dead at Tara. "My boy loves you. He can't hide his feelings for shit. And all this," she says, nodding her chin at the bikers and old ladies settling down around the long dining room table, "is gonna be his responsibility someday. It's his birthright. And he's gonna need a strong woman to stand by him."

A _strong woman_? Holy shit, Tara thinks. She's sixteen years old. She's barely been able to drive herself to school for a few months and Gemma is unloading this on her like she's got to start preparing herself for it. And the way she says it, Tara's not sure if Gemma is giving her blessing or warning her off. Which is the more frightening option—she's not sure.

"Come on, Tara," says Gemma, patting her on the shoulder. "Let's eat."

* * *

"Thanks for comin'," Jax says. He's idling in her driveway, safe with her father gone. "My mom really liked you."

"You think?" Tara says. She couldn't tell.

"Yeah, I promise. How could she not?" He flashes his big grin at her, a slash of white in the moonlight. After a night of sitting ramrod straight in her chair, of considering every word that comes out of her mouth to make sure she doesn't sound stupid or rude or condescending, it's his smile that finally sets her at ease. She heaves a long-held sigh out and covers his hand with her own.

"Thank you," she says sincerely, and jerks her head in the general direction of her bedroom window. "Want to come up? You don't even have to be gone by sunrise," she teases.

He turns his hand up so his palm his against hers and pulls her toward him. She stumbles a little bit and laughs against his mouth when he kisses her.

"Sounds perfect," he says, "but I can't. I've gotta run by TM, take care of some shit."

"Oh," she says, trying not to sound disappointed. She doesn't want to have the same fight with him. So she gives him another kiss and backs away from the bike. "Goodnight."

"Night, babe. Love you."

"Love you, too," she says, and watches him even after he disappears, wondering where he was, where he was going, as if staring after him could bring him back home to her.

The next morning, when she wakes up, she watches the news and sees a headline about a body found out on the side of the highway. A body wearing a cut—a member of the Mayans.

Is that where Jax was last night? Maybe. She doesn't know. Doesn't want to let herself wonder, and the part of her that wants to believe that Jax isn't involved tells her that Jax is a prospect, and if the Sons of Anarchy really are murderers, they wouldn't trust an eighteen year old kid to get the job done. (_An eighteen year old with a birthright_, says Gemma's voice in her head.) But still, her heart clenches and she wonders if it's possible that Jax could as easily tell her he loves her as take a life, and she wonders what it means for her—if she could kiss him and send him off to do it and love him despite it.

_He's gonna need a strong woman to stand by him._


	6. Three Times

_We can close our eyes  
__And cry out to the darkness  
__That there is still this light in us  
__There is this fight to find right where we belong  
__This ribcage, it is a staircase  
__Climb, climb it to my iris  
__You can live there  
__You know who I am  
__You know who I am_

—"Regarding Ascending the Stairs", Lady Lamb the Beekeeper

* * *

Her junior year, Tara is arrested three times.

The first time comes on her seventeenth birthday, when Jax takes her out to a field on the outskirts of his neighborhood. Donna and Opie come along and they sit in the bed of Opie's pickup, smoking weed and swigging from a bottle of tequila pilfered from Opie's dad's stash. Out there the stars are so bright and so numbered that Tara sees for what feels like the first time how big the world is. What else were those stars illuminating tonight? She wants to be there, everywhere: she wants to look at the stars in a hundred different cities and feel how far she's flown from home.

Jax and Opie surprise her when they tell the girls to stay put and run out to the center of the field. Tara sees a flicker of flame in the black night and then they are running back while fireworks burst up in the air, silver and blue and gold sparks falling like comets' trails. Tara is showered in light and she listens to Donna's delighted laughter and the proud whooping of the boys and she feels, somehow, so happy that it hurts.

It's the first time she is acutely aware of how little time she has left here; it's the first time she realizes that if she leaves—when she leaves—she can't take this with her.

"I love you," she whispers into Jax's ear. His hand is hot around her waist and she leans into him to shield herself from the late November chill.

"Happy birthday," he says back.

Donna and Opie beg off soon after—Donna is sweet but Tara senses that having let herself sober up enough to drive, she's tiring of being around her three drunken friends. She pushes Opie into the passenger seat, hugs Tara tight and wishes her a sincere happy birthday. Opie is too wasted to say much to her, which makes her laugh.

Tara doesn't trust Jax to drive them anywhere so they take the tequila and go off walking. Charming is small enough that it doesn't take long for them to reach main street, even stumbling as they are. It's late enough that the shops are closed but there's still some activity in the twenty-four hour diner and the two small bars. She drags Jax to a bench and he sits there with her stretched out on the length of it, her head in his lap, his fingers knotting in her hair, watching the slow trickle of small town late night life.

But they still have the tequila and so when a man passes by and calls dismissively for them to get a room, Jax is drunk enough to make a scene.

"Fuck off," he says, lumbering to his feet.

"Isn't it your bed time, kid?"

It's the wrong thing to say: Jax may be eighteen, he may be only a prospect, but he's a Son—he's the heir apparent—and he's not used to being treated like a child. He doesn't like it, either. Even in the dim light of the street lamp Tara can see the way his jaw goes tense and his eyes light up in that terrifying way of his. Jax has the most frightening fury she's ever known because it boils underneath his skin, underneath his charm; she's seen the way he smiles in a fight through a mouth of blood.

(What scares her is the way his anger mirrors her own, the way she feels the same rage curling in her blood, a flint that strikes the iron of her veins to fire. In some ways they are the same.)

She jumps up behind him and pulls him back, whispering in his ear to soothe him. "Blow me, shithead," Jax calls at the stranger. He turns around and gives Jax a little shove. Tara's had enough to drink that the momentum sends her stumbling backwards; her back hits the bench and she falls dizzily over, dread already pooling in her stomach.

She looks up and sees that Jax has the man backed up against a storefront and he's pointing wildly at Tara and at the patch on his cut. "You know what this means, bro? It means you don't touch me _or_ my old lady," he says, loud enough for her to hear. Maybe he can't see the prospect patch, maybe he doesn't know what it means, but the man is sufficiently scared by Jax's invocation of the Sons of Anarchy that when Jax releases him with a bracing pat on the cheek he leaves quietly. Jax stares after him, breathing hard through his nose. Tara stands in front of him and when he looks down at her everything about him has changed—his smile is real and his eyes honest.

"My hero," she says, shaking off the fear.

"I love you," he replies.

Tara smiles and takes the edges of his cut in her hands and pulls him closer to her. She is so wrapped up in kissing her boyfriend—her beautiful, mercurial, drunken boyfriend—that it takes several taps to her shoulder and a polite cough to break her free from him.

"Excuse me, officer," Jax drawls. She turns around and sees the officer standing in front of her; Jax wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her flush against his warm body. "I'm trying to wish my girl a happy birthday."

She thinks she recognizes the policeman; she's seen him around the clubhouse before. _Unser_—his name comes to her.

"Saw that little altercation you had, Jackson," Unser says. "Now, I know you're not dumb enough to be drunk in public and making threats."

"Nah, we ain't drunk," Jax says to him like they're friends.

"Not what it looked like to me." Unser gives her a look that she thinks is somewhere between pity and disappointment. She stares back at him, defiant. Let him judge her. From Jax's ambivalence toward law enforcement she knows that SAMCRO must have the police in their pocket; a corrupt cop's judgment means nothing to her. (This is what she tells herself to drown out her racing, frantic panic.) Unser says, "Now, listen, Jackson, I want you to do this for me and then I'll let you go—"

They fail the sobriety tests, and then the breathalyzers, and Unser arrests them for public intoxication.

* * *

Unser has them wait it out in the drunk tank for a few hours and then lets them off with a warning. Jax's stepdad picks them up from the station.

Clay Morrow is—she can only think of him as _big_. Big shoulders, big face, big energy. He is everything the president of SAMCRO should be, intimidation covered by a congenial humor. He jokes around with Unser while he unlocks their cell.

They climb into his SUV. Tara is silent; Jax is laughing.

"Your mother ain't gonna be happy about this," says Clay, giving Jax a hard look in the rear view mirror.

"Aw, come on." Jax wraps an arm around Tara's shoulders. "He was saying shit to Tara." This is not precisely true, but Tara isn't about to contradict him. Clay looks back at them for a moment longer before the mask cracks and he gives them a big, lionlike smile.

"We can keep it a secret, then," he says, "if you were defending your old lady's honor."

"Thanks for taking care of it with Unser," Jax says, and it's only then that it occurs to Tara that it may not have been Unser's choice, in the strictest sense, to let them off easy.

It's the first time Tara comes under SAMCRO's protection. She can't decide how to feel about it.

* * *

The second time she's arrested, it is not at all her fault, and she's furious with Jax for days.

It's March and it's cold and miserable so one weekend he takes her to the cabin his family owns up north. It's quiet and cozy and he brings two bottles of wine. It's the cheap stuff, but she appreciates his commitment to setting the mood.

The first night they're laying on the floor in front of the fire, their heads next to each other, their legs extended in opposite directions. Tara feels warm from the fire and the wine and her love for Jax. She feels like this all the time, it seems, like her blood jumps more when he's around or when she thinks of him and the excitability of her nerves warms her from the heart out.

"How are your GED classes?" she asks him with her eyes closed.

"Fine. Good," he amends. "How's school?"

"It's all right. I've been thinking about college."

There's a pause and then Jax says, carefully, like the thought hasn't occurred to him before, "You want to go to college?"

"I don't know. It's something to think about. I'm good at school and—" Tara stops herself, unsure of how to put the words together. She sighs and says, "I've just been thinking… God, I don't even know what I want to do. I want to be able to do anything. I want to have a better life than my parents."

She feels Jax move and when she opens her eyes he's rolled over, propped up on his elbows. "Well, babe," he says, and he punctuates his words with kisses, "you're looking at the future owner of Teller-Morrow Automotive Repair."

"Half owner," she corrects him, laughing.

"Aw, Clay's old ass will be dead in a decade." He winks at her. "I'll make loads of cash doing repos and selling parts under the table."

"Noble," she says. Jax raises his eyebrows at her; his expression says, _Obviously_.

"And I'll be able to give you anything you want."

The sentiment is sweet and honest and she pulls him down to give him a proper kiss in thanks. But she can't help but think that it's becoming more and more evident that there's nothing Jax can give her in all of Charming that will satisfy her hungry brain and the feeling in her heart she can't put a name to, the feeling that captures her like an electric current and tells her to run.

* * *

"I got you something."

She stops packing the duffel they'd brought and turns to look at Jax, who is hovering uncharacteristically nervously behind her.

"You did?"

"Yeah." He reaches out and takes her hand, drops something in it and closes her fingers over her palm like he can't stand to look at whatever he's given her. When she opens her hand there's a little pile of silver in the middle of her palm. Tara pinches the chain between her fingers and holds it up in the light so she can see it: a necklace with a solitary round diamond dangling from it. It's simple and understated and absolutely, completely perfect.

"It's nothin' fancy—"

"I love it," she interrupts quietly. She looks up and Jax's face is radiant in the sunlight, boyish and proud. "It's beautiful. Thank you."

He gives her a kiss and says, "Let me put it on," and as he moves behind her and pushes her hair gently to the side, she feels her heart break to think that she doubts this boy could make her as happy as she aches to be.

* * *

It turns out, of course, that the necklace was stolen.

She's sitting in the diner with Jax the day after they get back, after he picks her up from school. She's still feeling buoyed by love and affection for him when an officer she doesn't recognize slides into the booth next to her.

"Uh, hi," Tara says, alarmed. Jax is looking at the officer with steely eyes. "Can I help you?"

"You sure can," he says. "You Tara Knowles?"

"Why?"

As if he didn't hear her, he says, "Mind telling me where you got that necklace, Tara?"

"It was a gift." She levels a look at Jax.

"Lay off her, man," he says, but the officer continues.

"See, the funny thing is," he says, leaning forward across the table like he's having this conversation with Jax, "a necklace described _remarkably_ similar to the one you're wearing was reported missing from the pawn shop a few days ago with a few other items. Now, we picked up Lowell Harland yesterday—for possession of meth, but imagine our surprise when we found some of the missing jewelry in his car. You got a receipt for the necklace, Mr. Teller?"

"You chargin' me?" Jax says, defiant.

"As a matter of fact," says the officer, "yeah, I guess I am. Receipt of stolen property, both of you." He slaps his palms on the table when he gets up and gestures for both of them to stand.

"That's bullshit—" Jax starts, but Tara interrupts him.

"Just don't," she says quietly.

The officer does them the courtesy of forgoing cuffs, but climbing into the police car in front of the whispering diners is bad enough.

"Don't worry about it, babe. It won't stick," Jax says as she slides in beside him. He pauses, and then: "Man, fuck Lowell."

"Don't talk to me," she says. Beside her, Jax jerks in surprise, but he doesn't say anything else to her the whole ride to the station.

* * *

Jax is right, of course: he really didn't know that the necklace was stolen and Lowell confirms it as soon as his high wears off. They're released quickly and Chief Unser gives her a ride back to her house. She doesn't talk to Jax.

It's stupid, she knows: it's not his fault. He was just trying to be good to her. _I'll give you anything you want_. But he doesn't see—it's different for the two of them. It doesn't matter if Jax gets arrested; the men of SAMCRO bounce in and out of jail cells as quick as it takes for charges to fall through. It's practically a rite of passage. Even Opie had spent a night locked up, and Opie's the gentlest person she knows. No one looks at the charming bikers any different.

But Tara—she's supposed to be the smart one. She's the daughter of the town drunk and she has so much to prove, and she doesn't understand how Jax doesn't care about their futures when it matters so much to her.

After a few days she finally swallows her pride and waits outside TM for Jax to start his shift. Gemma isn't there, so Tara sits at one of the tables outside nursing a soda that a passing crow eater was kind enough to bring out to her. When Jax finally shows up (fifteen minutes late—he must know that Gemma isn't around) he regards her coolly before he sits on the bench next to her.

"I'm sorry," she says without preamble. "I shouldn't be mad at you."

"Are you mad?" he asks. "Right now?"

Tara considers this, and says, "Yes. But not at you, I don't think."

Jax ducks his eyes. He looks contrite. "I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to get you in trouble. I just wanted to do something nice." He sounds vulnerable then, the way he rarely sounds, and that conveys an apology more than words alone could. With Jax, reading his emotions is everything. He doesn't wear the bad stuff—the bloody, private, deep-down stuff—on his sleeve.

"It _was_ nice," she says. "And it wasn't your fault. I just had to—I have to take a minute. To think about…all of this."

"About us?" Jax says.

"No," she says quickly. "Just about me." Tara takes a deep breath, twists her hands around in her lap. She thinks of her life now: "I don't think I'm very happy with who I am anymore, Jackson."

"Hey," he says, and takes her chin in hand to make her look at him, his furrowed brow and soft eyes. "You're a _good_ person, Tara."

"Maybe," she says, "but I keep doing _stupid_ things, and I just—I don't know where I fit in. Not with you, or Charming, or my family. There all these—these pieces, and I don't know how to fit them all together. I don't know how to choose. I don't know how to be all the different people I need to be."

Jax is quiet for a minute, and then. "All I know," he says. "is we're meant to be together, Tara. I swear I've never been so sure of anything in my life. Anything I can do to convince you of that, I will. I promise I will. I want—" he stops, like the words are caught in his throat—"I want you to be my family. I want to be yours. Jesus, Tara. I'm so in love with you."

Tara feels the tears caught in her eyelashes; she feels them suspended there for one precarious second before she blinks and they tumble to her skin. She feels it in her heart, too, that same movement, the push over a precipice.

"I love you, too," she says, and puts her hands gently over his, kissing his fingers. And she knows her decision is made for her. All the other shit can come after. She has Jax. For now, that's enough.

* * *

After this, life seems to get better.

Her relationship with her father improves. Tara thinks that it will never be _okay_, but she's been through enough shit in her life that she knows you make concessions. Her father isn't all she has anymore—she has Jax, and Donna and Opie, she even has Gemma—and it's easier to forgive her father when it's on her own terms and not because he's all she has. He stops hitting her, even when he drinks: he's altogether more morose. He talks about her leaving, sometimes; he tells her she's got her mother's brains and she should do something with them and then, sometimes, she catches him crying.

Tara is surprised to find that she has no anger left for him, only pity, and it's one of the many ways she feels more like a mother than a daughter. She hasn't had the chance for so many years now to be a child, but she's here now, and she is who she is, and that's the end of it.

She spends more time with Gemma, too, and is surprised by the kindness she finds there. It's laced with layers of ice, to be sure, but the more Tara comes to accept the club—the less she asks about it, the more family dinners she shows up to help with and stays at even when the boys come in an hour late—the more Gemma seems to thaw toward her. Sometimes she's downright motherly.

Tara sucks this up, even knowing it's double-edged, even knowing that Gemma's love comes with conditions: it is love nonetheless, and when Gemma gives it you feel the power of it, like it's a gift bestowed on you. She wields affection like a weapon and Tara _knows_ this but—but sometimes, it's enough.

The rest of the year passes like this, a blur, and she falls more and more love with Jackson until one spring day he shows up at her house with an envelope and a grin.

"What's this?" she says when he hands it to her.

"Read it," he says, so she does: she opens it up and when she sees what's inside, she smiles as wide as he does.

Jax finished his GED.

"I didn't know you were so close!" she exclaims, and gives him a soft punch to the shoulder. "You should have _told_ me."

"I've seen how you study," says Jax. "You woulda locked me up in your room with books for a week if you knew."

"Maybe. Maybe the rewards would have been really, _really_ good."

Jax steps into the doorway, puts his hands around her waist and walks her back until her back is against the wall. "Any chance that reward's still on the table?" he asks her, jerking his chin back like he does when he knows he's going to get what he wants.

"I could be convinced," she says, and Jax kicks the door closed behind them.

* * *

There's a party at TM that night—of course there is—and Jax and Opie are both the objects of celebration. Opie got his GED, too (she wonders if Jax and Opie can do anything separately—there's so much love there, the kind you don't normally see between teenage boys, but SAMCRO has a way of making brotherhood mythic) and she kisses him on the cheek in congratulations before Donna drags her off to do shots.

The night is perfect, really, and if she's at all surprised by how comfortable she feels in this world now, she doesn't let herself dwell on it.

And then, in a quiet moment, Clay sits Jax and Opie down and makes them take off their cuts. Tara knows then what's happening; Jax and Opie know it and they look like boys, like children, filled with wonder at a world they've been allowed into. They saw off their prospect patches and Clay gives them both their new patches. Redwood Originals. Fully patched.

They cheer and clap and Tara does the same because she doesn't know what to do. Jax comes up to her, his cheeks bright and his eyes maybe glassy with emotion, and she says, "I'm so proud of you."

It's the right thing to say: he pulls her into a backbreaking hug and beside her Gemma is approving.

It's still maybe only nine o'clock when Jax tells her he has an idea and before long she is in the tattoo parlor with him and a few of his brothers, watching the muscles of his back clench as the man drills the tattoo gun into his skin. It seems like it hardly takes any time and she thinks how strange it is, that in a few hours Jax has slipped from one life to the next, that Tara's life has changed along with his.

* * *

A few days later she finds herself in the tattoo parlor.

It is a spur of the moment thing, and they are emboldened by alcohol and love and youth, and Jax is holding her hand while the artist inks a crow into the small of her back.

(_In the days after Jax is patched in Tara feels herself floundering; she feels more connected to Jax than ever but there's a part of her that's so afraid of him moving further into the club. Not just the violence of it—although that pricks at the back of her mind more often than not—but what it means for him to be so dedicated. She has to be strong. She has to be as strong as him._

_So on a lazy Saturday, her brain foggy and thick with whiskey, she says, "Do you want me to get the crow?"_

_Jax stops working on his bike, fully drops the wrench and turns to stare at her like he's never seen her before. "What?" he says._

"_I know that the women of the club do it," she says. "And you're patched in now, so I thought—"_

"Yeah_." He doesn't even let her get the words out. "Yeah, I want you to do it. If you want to."_

_She loves the look on his face, half in love with her, half turned on. If she knows Jax at all, he's thinking with his dick right now. But she laughs, because she's in love with him too, and there's something about committing herself to him this way—yeah, it does something to her too.)_

"How does it look?" she says when it's done, peering over her shoulder even though she can't see it. The look on Jax's face is confirmation enough, though.

"Fucking hot," he says earnestly.

He pays and they head up at the clubhouse, where he shows her off, and she feels a little strange about it—good-strange, maybe; there are so many thoughts in her head she can't make sense of them.

"Let me see," says Gemma, and she pulls up Tara's shirt to give it a hard look. Tara meets her eyes; there's love there, and acceptance. Maybe she's proven herself. "Looks good, sweetie."

The party gets shut down by the cops. Noise complaint. Tara wouldn't care, but Unser gives her a _look_ and tells her to get home. She hates him and his condescension, and she is still a little drunk, so she spits back, "I don't need you to tell me what to do."

Unser turns around and says, "Excuse me?"

"Don't treat me like I should know better," she says. "Don't try to look out for me. I don't even know you."

Unser pauses, and then he says, "You know, Tara, I met your mom once or twice down at the station." She knows what he's implying, the words that are left unsaid but carried underneath like an anchor dragging his well-meaning act down: _I knew your mom from when your dad kicked the shit out of her_. How could he throw that in her face? "She was real sweet. Kind. She would have been real sad to see you act this way."

The words are out before she can stop them: "Fuck you," she says, and starts forward. Jax throws himself in between her and Unser but there is rage in her; she sees red and feels herself choking on the indignity of this. She's found her place here with Jax—she's found something that soothes the whirring of her anxious mind—and the suggestion that her mother would be disappointed in her makes her nauseated.

"Leave her alone, man." Jax sounds angry; he knows what her family is—was—like. He knows the suggestion there. He knows what his family is like, too, and it's not perfect but she knows that as cocky as Jax is Unser's suggestion that his family—Jax himself—aren't good enough for Tara makes him as angry as it makes her.

"You don't want to do that, Jackson," says Unser, but Jax doesn't move. He's staring the cop down coolly. "You can end this peacefully or you can stay the night in jail. Your call."

Tara looks Unser in the eyes. "Thanks for the advice," she says levelly. "You're as good an influence as you are a cop."

Unser pops them both for disorderly conduct.

* * *

The cop who processes them is kind enough to put them in the same cell; they spend the night there quietly, but there is no anger between them like there was before. There's understanding in that space now, a quiet acceptance that they're in this together. Thick as thieves.

Gemma gets them in the morning, bright and early. They've already dropped the bullshit charge—it was just an old man's attempt at a lesson. She doesn't seem mad; she gives Tara a long hug and Tara thinks maybe she understands that Tara was sticking up for her, too. When they drop her off Jax gives her a quiet kiss on the forehead and lets his hand linger in the small of her back where he's marked her and whispers _I love you_, _be safe_.

When Tara walks in her father is awake, sitting on the couch, a nearly empty handle of vodka in front of him. He looks up when she walks in, and she sees his red eyes. She stops short like a deer in headlights.

"You were in jail?" he says, and it's like saying the words breaks him. He starts crying: messy crying, the gasping, gulping kind. Drunk crying.

"It was a misunderstanding," she says softly. He doesn't seem mad and she doesn't know what to do with that.

He is mumbling something into his hands, and it's only when she takes a cautious seat on the couch next to him that she can understand what he's saying: "God, what would your mother think?"

Tara stares at him, open-mouthed. He backhands the bottle across the table and it hits the wall with a dull _thump_ and rolls down the floor. There are other empty bottles here, ones she hasn't had the time to clean up yet, and he stands up and kicks them. Her father is strong, tall and broad shouldered and powerful—even the alcohol hasn't taken that from him—but he looks weak to her now, weak and defeated and sad.

"What would your mother think of me?" he says.

Tara doesn't know what to say. She can only stare at him and she has no consolation to give to him and she feels only the tattoo burning her back like a brand, like a wound.


End file.
